"TWO GOODLY SONS… THE ONE SO LIKE THE OTHER AS COULD NOT BE DISTINGUISHED BUT BY NAMES": THE COMEDY OF ERRORS, EXTRACTED FROM THE THIRD FOLIO, 1664

SHAKESPEARE. [The Comedie of Errors]. [London: Printed for P.C., 1664]. Folio (9 by 13-1/2 inches), period-style three-quarter calf gilt, red morocco spine labels, marbled boards. $4250.

Eight original leaves from the Third Folio, containing The Comedie of Errors, Shakespeare's early farce of identical twins and mistaken identity, handsomely bound.

The four folios of Shakespeare are the first four editions of Shakespeare's collected plays. These were the only collected editions printed in the 17th century (a 1619 attempt at a collected edition in quarto form was never completed). The 1664 second issue of the Third Folio (from which this play was taken), is the first to include Pericles (along with six other spurious plays) and is therefore the first complete edition of Shakespeare's plays. The Third Folio is believed to be the scarcest of the four great 17th-century folio editions, a large part of the edition presumed destroyed in the Great London Fire of 1666. "The folios are incomparably the most important work in the English language" (W.A. Jackson, Pforzheimer Catalogue).

Leaves H1-I2 contain The Comedie of Errors. "The shortest and most unified of all Shakespeare's plays, The Comedy of Errors… is a remarkably sophisticated elaboration of (and improvement upon) Plautus, the Roman comic dramatist… Exuberant fun as it is and must be, this fierce little play is also one of the starting points for Shakespeare's reinvention of the human" (Harold Bloom).

The facsimile title page and frontispiece reproduce these pages of the second issue of the Third Folio, bearing the date 1664 in the imprint rather than 1663.

Only occasional foxing. Binding handsome and fine.